People improve skills through an iterative process often cluttered with peer suggestions, presumptions and lore. For those who hire instructors, the process may be faster, but it's also more expensive. In both cases, those learning typically interpret suggestions, instructor comments or video analyses. They then convert the perceptions to action. New habits are formed after extended repetition of those refined motions. With effort, the altered motions reflect desirable changes and better performance. For most of us—with or without an instructor—the process is painfully slow.
Taking instruction from someone is not easy, particularly where precision or particularized motion is required. Add complexity of any sort and the difficulty increases. When one's goal is to create habits of the newly refined motor skill, the task is complicated further. Pictures or video can simplify the process, but the task remains difficult.
Video capture and playback of a user performing a physical activity or motion is often used to train users to perform and/or refine specific motions or activities. Such use is supported by research, which has shown that systematic video presentation of visual cues can improve motor skill development. Golf instructors, for example, use video tools to display a student's swing relative to a professional's, pointing out similarities and differences during their critiques.
Such tools have limits. Among them: 1) the user passively watches the captured video, comparison or analysis after execution; 2) third parties, e.g., golf instructors, often conduct the analysis and explain rather than represent corrective action, explanations that users must interpret; and 3) the user must then attempt to incorporate the insights of the third party at a later time. The iterative process can be rewarding, but is also slow, imprecise, tedious and frustrating. The success of this review-and-repeat method is limited by a number of factors. The factors include user fatigue, user boredom, inability of the user to identify the ways in which his or her motion or activity differs from the ideal, and the short-term kinesthetic memory of humans.
It is desirable to provide a system and method that improves on the process of learning or improving of specific skills and motions. Further, it is desirable to provide real time comparisons. Such comparisons can be visual, data centric or both to improve the learning process.
Related to the need to provide such a system and method is the need to provide for assessment and/or rehabilitation for injuries. If the system and method facilitates comparison of a user's current motion to a motion they might desire, so much the better.
One such injury of consequence is concussion. Concussions in sports has become such a significant issue that various organizations have indicated that concussion assessments should be provided for all susceptible athletes. Ideally, susceptible athletes conduct assessments prior to participating in their respective sports to establish baseline results. Such baseline results enable post-injury assessment comparisons.
Athletic team coaches and/or team physicians must implement a concussion management program for student athlete health and to minimize associated athletic program legal liability.
Typically such assessments should include postural stability or balance assessments.
The ability to maintain stability in an erect posture is a skill that the central nervous system learns using information from passive biomechanical elements, sensory systems and muscles.
The maintenance and control of posture depends on the integrity of the central nervous system, visual system, vestibular system and musculoskeletal system. In addition, postural control depends on information from receptors located in and around the joints as well as on the soles of the feet.
The central nervous system must be able to detect and predict instability and must be able to respond to all of the inputs with appropriate outputs to maintain equilibrium of the body.
Balance assessments, particularly when baseline data is available, represent one of many factors qualified healthcare professionals will use in concussion evaluations.
Video and playback of a user performing a physical activity or motion as well as postural stability or balance assessment can use advantageously motion comparison and analysis.
Unfortunately, motion comparison and analysis in existing tools requires individuals skilled in interpreting image difference through visual cues, frame by frame video comparison, and both activity specific experience and expertise. Further, access to comparative video content, specialized video capture equipment, and qualified evaluation expertise can be time, cost, and alternative limited.
One problem with existing alternatives in the market for comparing a user's motion with an ideal motion is that no existing product allows the user to watch his or her own motion in real-time as they mimic an ideal motion.
Existing alternatives are hampered in their effectiveness by providing video analysis tools viewed by users after motion recording, i.e., video analyses and motion comparisons; requiring carefully placed and monitored sensors to gather data; relying on graphical, stylized, or generalized anatomical physiology representations of user motions, or other augmentations; requiring the presence of experts or the delivery of expert review; or combinations of these factors that delay visual feedback.